Nineteen

Summary

• The protagonist goes to visit her mother, hoping for comfort and distance from an unspecified backlash in her professional life.
• Her mother lives near Philadelphia, although she is in the process of selling her house to go live near her daughters in Melbourne.
• The protagonist reflects on her childhood reconnecting with her past through her old notebooks, which contain her early ideas and fantasies.
• She feels nostalgic for the time when writing was an act of imagination and not bound by the demands of markets and audience expectations.
• During dinner with her mother, the protagonist opens up about her writing block and worries about becoming irrelevant.
• Her mother suggests she might need to consider other types of careers, like accounting, but the protagonist refuses.
• The protagonist also refuses her mother's suggestion about investing in property, before accusing her of not supporting her writing.
• Her mother denies this, saying she just didn't want to see her get hurt, but the protagonist finds this patronising.